


Together

by paperstorm



Series: IRL [6]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Established Relationship muke, Gen, M/M, OT4 Bromance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4802966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperstorm/pseuds/paperstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys take a moment to celebrate on their own after the last show of the ROWYSO tour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

Alcohol thrums through Michael’s veins, dull and pleasant, buzzed but not drunk yet. He might just try to keep this up tonight. He always regrets getting too drunk the next day, and they have a plane to catch tomorrow. It isn’t at the ass-crack of dawn like their flights sometimes are, but still. Michael hangover-puked in an airplane bathroom once. It wasn’t fun. He’d rather not relive the experience.  
   
They’re at someone’s house – Michael doesn’t even know who’s, he didn’t ask questions, just allowed himself to be herded here – and he’s lost his bandmates in the crowd, but for now it’s alright. Everyone is here, all the people who’ve become their family in the last six months. Tech guys and roadies and so many people Michael’s gotten used to seeing daily and is going to miss like crazy. At least until the next one. He really hopes they can get everyone back.  
   
Holding tight to his half-full Solo cup – the black kind, because if people are going to insist on calling him  _Emo Prince_  on the internet Michael is going to damn well earn it, thank you very much – he wanders a little, scanning through familiar faces, receiving pats on the shoulder and smiles as he walks; searching. He spots a bright pink head first, Nia’s bubble-gum colored hair sticking out in the mass of darker colors. Then his eyes travel up,  _way_  up, to the top of Luke’s figure that towers over Nia’s small frame. They’re chatting, Nia smiling and touching Luke’s arm.  
   
Michael smirks to himself just a little. He sort of thinks she has a bit of a crush on Luke. He doesn’t blame her. He also isn’t worried. She’s great, pretty and confident and sparkly and fun. Michael likes her a lot, he likes all of them. But Luke is all his.  
   
“Mind if I steal him for a bit?” Michael asks, approaching them from behind Luke and addressing Nia.  
   
Her face splits into an even bigger smile. “Mikey!” she cries, and gives him a hug.  
   
Michael doesn’t bother pointing out he really only likes when Luke calls him that. It doesn’t matter. The tour is over, and it was never a regular thing anyway.  
   
“Sure!” she continues, breezy and casual. “Just don’t disappear for too long. This is your party, after all.”  
   
“It’s everyone’s party,” Luke corrects, humble as always. He’s right, though. This was their tour in name, but it belonged to everyone. Michael bites his lip and catches his boyfriend’s eye, nodding in the other direction and motioning for Luke to follow.  
   
They find an empty bedroom upstairs. Michael shuts the door behind them, and turns to find Luke smiling at him. Luke has this uncanny ability to look tiny and shy even though he’s 6`3 and broader than a barn.  
   
“What?” Michael asks, smiling back.  
   
“You jealous, Clifford?”  
   
Michael snorts. “Of the fairy princess? Please.”  
   
Luke walks over to him and gets his arms around Michael’s waist, tugging him in close enough to kiss the tip of his nose. “You don’t need to be.”  
   
“I’m  _not_ ,” Michael says, honestly. “Just wanted you to myself for a while.”  
   
With another smile, Luke presses his lips to Michael’s forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. He’s drunker than Michael is; his body a hot, sweaty line against Michael’s. It makes Michael feel feverish, but he hooks his arms around Luke’s neck anyway and captures his mouth in a real kiss.  
   
“We did it,” Luke whispers.  
   
“I know,” Michael whispers back. He’s glad Luke brought it up. It’s the real reason Michael brought him up here. He’s not dumb enough to think they could sneak away for long enough to fuck – especially not in someone else’s home, in the middle of a party that is, at least in theory, for them. He just can’t get his head around tonight. What a ride it’s been, that it’s all over. He needs Luke right now, to ground him to the moment.  
   
“How many people d’you think actually get this?” Luke asks, soft and secretive. His head is tipped forward, forehead resting against Michael’s, and his fingers are pushed up under the hem of Michael’s t-shirt, petting at the small of his back. “How many people have some crazy pipe-dream at fourteen and then actually achieve it?”  
   
“Probably almost none,” Michael answers. There’s a pit in his stomach, of emotions he’s not sure he even knows how to handle.  
   
“It’s what we wanted. It’s everything we wanted,” Luke continues. He laughs softly, like he can’t believe it. Michael can’t either. “We used to talk about this, remember? That we wanted to start a band and see the world. Put guitars back on the radio. Play in sold-out arenas.”  
   
“God, don’t, you’re gonna make me cry,” Michael moans. He’s joking, but also not.  
   
“Think about all the stuff we’ve done.”  
   
“I can’t,” Michael says. “I’m too bummed that it’s over.”  
   
“We got to see Japan.”  
   
“I always wanted to see Japan.”  
   
“I know.” One of Luke’s hands comes up to cup Michael’s cheek. His thumb brushes just under Michael’s eye. “You were so beautiful, there. So happy.”  
   
“How drunk are you?” Michael asks, to hide the way his breath hitches and his heart clenches. Luke can affect him too easily, too quickly. Michael’s always been that way. A few choice words and he’s putty in Luke’s hands.  
   
“Not that drunk. I’m just … we fuckin’ did it, Mikey. We did it all. Together, just like we wanted. You and me.”  
   
Michael swallows thickly. He closes his eyes and runs his fingers through the curls at the nape of Luke’s neck. “I love you, so fucking much.”  
   
“I love you more,” Luke murmurs, sliding his lips over Michael’s again, slow and sweet. It makes Michael’s chest swell in a way that overwhelms him, how much he loves the boy in his arms, how much he loves his band and his life right now. Mostly it’s Luke, just at this moment, but at any other given moment it’s  _everything_. It’s more than overwhelming.  
   
A knock at the door they’re currently leaning against startles Michael; he jumps and so does Luke, and then they laugh nervously.  
   
“Yeah?” Michael answers. His voice comes out squeakier than he intended.  
   
“Are you two naked in there?” Ashton’s voice asks.  
   
Luke smiles at Michael and shakes his head. “No,” he calls out.  
   
“Not yet,” Michael adds, even though it isn’t true. This wasn’t ever going in that direction. Michael figured they wouldn’t have enough time before they got caught, and Ashton just proved his theory.  
   
“Well put your dicks back in your pants, we’re coming in,” Calum announces, and it’s lucky Luke and Michael’s dicks aren’t actually out because the door opens a second later, hitting Michael on the shoulder, leaving them virtually no time to make themselves decent if they’d needed to.  
   
“Dude, if we  _had_  been naked you’d be catching an eyeful of shit you really don’t wanna be seeing right now,” Michael points out, rubbing his arm where the door smacked into him.  
   
“Like we haven’t seen you naked half a billion times,” Calum mutters, shutting the door again behind them.  
   
“Per  _day_ ,” Ashton finishes.  
   
“Yeah but not half-chubbed.”  
   
“Michael!” Luke cries, laughing but offended, smacking Michael’s other shoulder in retaliation.  
   
“Okay, sure, it’s all my fault,” Michael grumps. “Let’s just all blame Michael for everything.”  
   
“Get on the bed,” Ashton commands, pointing.  
   
“Why,” Michael asks flatly. “Are you that lonely?”  
   
“Because we just finished headlining a fucking world tour and we are celebrating with a band cuddle. For nostalgic purposes.”  
   
“You hate cuddling.”  
   
“He’s drunk,” Calum supplies helpfully.  
   
“No I’m not!” Ashton protests. “Okay, yes I am, but I do not hate cuddling, I just don’t like it as much as you idiots do, but right now is the time for it so stop arguing and get on the damn bed.”  
   
He grabs Luke’s arm and tugs him, landing messily onto the mattress. Michael can’t help laughing. He goes too, and so does Calum, the four of them ending up in a pile of limbs and sweat-damn bodies on somebody else’s bed – Luke and Ashton in the middle, Michael and Calum framing the edges. Luke lies on his back and pulls Michael in close against his side. Ashton mirrors the position on Luke’s other side and Calum sort of spoons them all, his arm and leg thrown across the whole group.  
   
“It smells really good in here,” Calum jokes.  
   
“We smell like  _men_ ,” Ashton announces proudly.  
   
“One of you smells like beer,” Michael says.  
   
“Men,” Ashton repeats. “Very, very manly men.”  
   
No one bothers to address the irony. It doesn’t matter, anyway. It never has with them.  
   
“So … here’s to the next one, I guess?” Calum begins, grasping for the words to sum everything up, like they all are. Michael isn’t sure the proper words exist. Not in English, anyway, and none of them speak anything else.  
   
“Fuck that, here’s to  _this_  one! Let’s live in this moment for at least a night, yeah? Boys, this was fucking amazing,” Ashton says. “From start to finish. We fuckin’ rocked it.”  
   
“I keep thinking about all the songs we’ll never play again,” Luke pipes up, his voice small and a little sad. “Like, it’s okay. Because we’ve got new ones that I like way better anyway. But even still, it’s like … they’ve been part of us, for so long. And some of them will stick around. But not all of them. Some of them are gonna die tonight.”  
   
“Hemmings!” Ashton groans. “That is so not … we’re celebrating!”  
   
“Sorry,” Luke mumbles, sheepishly.  
   
Michael kisses his neck and makes a mental note to revisit the topic later. If it’s something Luke needs to talk about, Michael will talk with him. “Remember the purple shirt?” Michael jokes, to lighten the mood.  
   
Ashton groans even louder, and reaches over to flick Michael on the elbow. “Seriously? We’re gonna do this again? It’s been almost four years.”  
   
Calum laughs. “It was a hideous shirt, bro.”  
   
“Of course no one is on my side.”  
   
“No, dude.” Michael flicks Ashton back, and then leaves his arm draped across Luke’s stomach. “I just mean like … how fucking far we’ve come. ‘Cause that was like our beginning. The purple shirt is like the start of everything.”  
   
“It isn’t, though,” Ashton argues. “You three were already doing shit for a long time before I came along.”  
   
“But when we found you, we were complete.” Luke’s free arm finds Ashton’s leg and squeezes it. “We weren’t a real band until you. You were the last puzzle piece.”  
   
“I hate every one of you,” Ashton says, but his voice wavers and Michael smiles. He knows about the things Ashton struggled with; he knows joining the band just might have saved Ashton’s life. They all know.  
   
“You do not.” Calum hugs Ashton around the middle from behind and snuggles in closer. “You love us to death.”  
   
“I do. I love you guys.” Luke turns his face into the top of Michael’s head, lips catching and dragging against Michael’s hair, but still talking to the group. “All of you.”  
   
“Me too.” Calum’s voice is low and serious. “You guys are my best friends. My family. I can’t even imagine doing this with anyone else. I wanna do this with you three for the rest of my life.”  
   
“We came this far together, I think you’re stuck with us now,” Luke says. It sounds like a promise that means a lot more than the words suggest.  
   
“We did it.” Michael says it again, repeating what he said earlier to just Luke, and reaches out just a little further to pat Ashton and then Calum on their arms, briefly. Just so they know he’s talking to all of them. “Together.”  
   
“And here’s to the next one,” Ashton adds.  
   
“What happened to living in the moment?” Calum asks.  
   
Ashton shrugs. “You were right. The moment should include dreaming about all the fucking awesome shit that’s coming.”  
   
“Yes, it should,” Luke agrees, and then silence falls over them, and it’s okay. It’s the good kind of silence, the comfortable kind. Michael closes his eyes and nuzzles into Luke’s neck, and just breathes. He soaks it all in, everything they’ve accomplished, everything that’s on the horizon, everything he dreamt about since the first time he heard a Greenday song on the radio when he was still in single-digits. Wrapped up with his band, with his family, it doesn’t feel like a bed in a stranger’s guest room anymore. It feels like home. Calum said  _where the band is, home is_  once in an interview. He was right.

**Author's Note:**

> [follow me on tumblr if you want!](http://paper-storm.tumblr.com/)


End file.
